Humbled By Black Myth: Wukong For 2 Excruciating Hours (2024)

Soulslike fans love unique challenges. One of the most impressive feats you can achieve in Dark Souls is playing through the entire series without taking a single hit, but that might not even be the hardest challenge out there. Someone once beat Dark Souls 3 using only Morse code. Another completed the original Dark Souls using 20 bananas as a controller. Twitch streamer Luality is famous for playing Dark Souls 3 on a Dance Dance Revolution dance pad. Last week I myself faced one of the greatest Soulslike challenges there is: playing Black Myth: Wukong for the first time in front of its developers. You think a deathless run is hard? Try dying to the first boss seven times while the makers of the game silently judge you.

I’m not a big Souls player, but I did have a great time trying out Black Myth: Wukong. The two-hour demo I played took me through half a dozen boss encounters while introducing a variety of characters and all of the core progression and combat systems. Fans of the genre will find plenty of familiar ideas: campfires allow you to refill your health pots, purchase items, and craft armor upgrades, while also giving you a respawn point to come back to when you inevitably die. But it’s where Wukong breaks from genre traditions that make it truly stand out.

Combat has a very different flow from what you might be used to in this genre. Activating your light attack unleashes a flurry of quick, acrobatic hits that combo together several times before ending in a heavy finisher. The heavy attack (the default is a long-range, overhead slam) needs to be charged up before it can be used, either by holding the heavy attack button for a few seconds, or landing consecutive light attacks until you store a charge that you can unleash later on. The stamina gauge limits how much you can attack and dodge, though, so you can't just spam light attacks over and over. Even against weak enemies, fights require a lot of patience. It's all about building up your power and waiting for the right moment to unleash a string of devastating attacks on your opponent.

Wukong’s combat is all about resource management. On top of your health, stamina, and charge meter, you also have a magic resource used for spells. The first one I learned was a time stop that could freeze enemies in place. The spell itself has a cooldown after use, but you also spend some mana every time you use it, which can only be refilled by visiting a campsite.

After defeating an optional boss called Guangzhi, a wolf wielding a flaming staff, I earned the ability to transform into him. Guangzhi has a powerful move set and the ability to ignite enemies, applying a burn that damages them over time, but what really makes this ability handy is that turning into Guangzhi gives you a new, full health bar. Eventually time runs out and you transform back into the Destined One, but transforming can be a great way to survive when your health is low by allowing you to tank a bunch of difficult to avoid attacks. Again, more layers of resource management.

There’s no block or parry in Black Myth, which might be the thing that separates it the most from the rest of the Souslike genre. You have a staff spin ability that allows you to deflect ranged attacks, but when you’re facing off against an enemy, dodging is your main method of avoiding damage.

Of course, dodging doesn’t stagger or interrupt an enemy's attacks the way a parry would, and one of the most difficult things about Wukong’s boss fights is how often you’re required to dodge multiple attacks in a row. Every time I nailed a perfect dodge my instinct was to immediately retaliate with a barrage of attacks, but more often than not, you need to string three or more perfect dodges together before the enemy gives you an opening. Most of my deaths came because I dodged too early, or failed to dodge a bunch of times in a row.

As a filthy casual, I can confirm that Black Myth is not going to be a beginner-friendly entry point to the genre, but it’s also easy to see this is the real deal - something that transcends the label of ‘Dark Souls clone’ and stands on its own as a competent, well-designed action RPG. The only criticisms I have are about the generic forest environments that, while beautiful, don’t leave much room for exploration, nor do they inspire the imagination the way Bloodborne’s Yarnham or even Lies of P’s Krat do. This is just the game’s intro though, so I anticipate there’s a lot more to see.

Black Myth: Wukong launches August 19, and I expect it won’t take long before the hardcore nerds start cooking up some impossible challenges for it. It’s too bad the banana thing has already been done, but I’m sure someone will find a way to make this brutally difficult game somehow even more masoch*stic. Maybe not as masoch*stic as letting the developers watch you struggle for two hours straight, but still pretty hard.